Using a Jesse Tree to tell Bible stories

Jesse Trees are a Christmas tradition from medieval times. The name comes from the fact that Jesse was the father of King David. People make these trees in a variety of ways. It’s a bit like an Advent calendar, but it’s a tree, with ornaments that go on it for each day from December 1 to 25. Each ornament is decorated with a symbol for a story that leads up to the birth of Christ, starting with Creation. Each day, you tell a story and put the ornament on the tree.

My husband and I wanted to make a Jesse Tree to decorate Mum’s nursing home room. Mum recently became a Christian (Bible stories were a significant part of this process) and we thought this would be a fun thing to do together.

For our Jesse Tree, my husband and I painted an evergreen on a poster-sized piece of paper because with Mum’s physical limitations (she can’t move on her own), she can see it better if it’s on the wall near one side of her bed. Our ornaments are just circles of paper with pictures I coloured in. I got the pictures by looking at different picture sets from free Jesse Tree and Bible clip art I found online, copying and pasting into a word processor. I also shortened ours to less than 25 stories since we aren’t there every single day. I included all the ‘before Christ’ stories in this website’s standard story set.

Still, it’s more stories than I know well. I have been bumbling through with encouragement from Mum and my husband. I have considered playing recordings of other people’s stories but I haven’t tried playing them for Mum yet because I think she really likes the personal aspect of our telling stories to her, limited as we are as storytellers.

We’re delighted that Mum has asked to be baptised on Christmas day in a small family ceremony.

Submitted by MS and used with permission.